


Uchiwa

by Aethelar



Category: Naruto
Genre: (but not in a sad way), Character Death, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It, Gen, Mikoto will burn Konoha to the ground for what they've done, The crack is that the Uchiha dye their hair pink, The serious is that this is part of learning how to survive and heal, Trauma with a hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24255991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Uchiha Mikoto stands up in the council meeting and says: "You can die if you like. My sons and I will not."---The Uchiha know about the massacre beforehand and survive. It's not easy, and it leaves scars, but it's worth it; they become the Uchiwa clan, who are refugees and loud and immediately recognisable by their bright magenta hair.
Comments: 64
Kudos: 572





	Uchiwa

It started at a little past ten in the morning on what was, in all other aspects, a fairly standard summer day. The air was neither muggy nor fresh, but rather that odd inbetween sort of heaviness that comes when it needs to rain, and the breeze that caused the shoji screens to rattle in their frames carried the faintest hint of sweetness from the gardens down the street.

Uchiha Mikoto paused, blinked, and shook her head.

In his study, Uchiha Fugaku paused, frowned, and rubbed his fingers against his eyes.

In the training field, Uchiha Itachi neither paused nor blinked, but continued throwing kunai with the same single minded purpose as he did anything else in life, and on the edge of the field his brother clapped in delight for each successful hit.

And across the compound: Uchiha Shisui, who was eating a chicken skewer and nearly choked on it, Uchiha Akira who was hanging out her washing, Uchiha Haru who fumbled the tray of buns and dropped one to be burnt on the bottom of the oven -

In the mission office. In the field. In one of the blank, white rooms under the village that wasn't supposed to exist. In the land of Rain.

At a little past ten in the morning, they all thought, _The Uchiha clan dies on the first of January and the village will steal the eyes from our corpses before the blood has time to cool._

It's a somewhat depressing thought to have on what was otherwise a normal summer day. For most, at least; the Uchiha in the land of Rain flickers a half-smile over his face, tugging at the scar tissue and dismissing the fantasy as an overly indulgent dream.

At seventeen minutes past eleven, those with a sharingan find it activated. They frown, or blink, or hold their faces precisely so and don't let themselves react, and turn it off.

At twelve forty three it activates again, a quick on-off that leaves a memory seared across their eyelids. The streets run red. One child stands with a sword in his hands and his face so carefully blank you can see the scream behind it. The other kneels, crying, choking, tiny broken sobs that pitifully ask why, why, why _why why_

At twelve forty eight, they think in unison, _The Uchiha clan dies on the first of January and the village will force one son to kill us all and use the other son to kill the first._

Itachi recognises his brother in the memory that's now playing on repeat in his head. He doesn't recognise himself. He collects his kunai, stoic, quiet - he checks, but Sasuke tilts his head in question and doesn't seem to have seen what Itachi saw. This Sasuke's eyes are black; he doesn't have a sharingan. In the memory, his eyes are red, and they look at Itachi like they hate him, and Itachi collects his kunai and collects his brother and goes home with his face carefully blank and a scream building in the back of his throat.

At six minutes past one the sharingans blink on again, across the compound, across the village, across the Fire nation and in Rain - _Danzo_ , the thoughts say, and they see him take their eyes, _Danzo_ and they see him giving the order to one of their own, _Danzo_ and they see the Hokage shake his head at the murderer's retreating back and make no move to stop him.

Itachi stops. "Go home, Otouto," he says. He turns his back. He walks.

He is sick behind a tree. He uses a water jutsu to remove the evidence. He keeps walking.

"Sasuke," Mikoto says, hovering at the clan gates. She keeps her voice calm, because the clan gates front onto the village and there are ninja and civilians alike wandering past, and the dislike they level her way has never felt so dangerous before. She doesn't swallow, and she doesn't let it show (Itachi was always more her son than Fugaku's); but she reaches for his hand in a way she hasn't done since he joined the academy. "Where's your brother? He'll be late for lunch if he isn't home soon."

"He left," Sasuke says, smiling at her in delight because his father says ninja don't hold people's hands but Sasuke was made to be happy and his mother's hand is warm. "I can get him? We were training by the river."

"No," she says, sharper than she means to. "Stay home, Sasuke."

Shisui appears, a frantic shunshin that spirals leaves out even though he hasn't been so sloppy in months. "You found him?" he asks, sharingan flicking on-off-on. "Where is he? Sasuke, where's Itachi?"

"We were training," Sasuke starts, shrinking back as he picks up Shisui's fear - but Shisui is already gone and the air is tense in his wake.

At eighteen minutes past one Mikoto tightens her grip on Sasuke, eyes sharingan-red and blazing, and Shisui growls a curse and keeps running in another shunshin to another place that Itachi might be while another vision plays out -

 _Take it_ , the Shisui in the vision says, holding his mangekyou in his hands. His face is smeared red with blood. His teeth are white against it when he smiles. His hair floats black around it as he falls back in the river and drowns. _There will be war_ , the Shisui says. _Danzo stole my right eye_ , the Shisui says.

 _Shisui,_ the Itachi in the vision says.

"Shisui," Itachi chokes, and when Shisui finds him his face is white and his eyes are black and his teeth are red from where he bit through his lip and made it bleed.

(In the land of Rain, Obito hesitates. There is a difference, he finds, between the clan paying for their crimes and a boy he remembers being a baby drowning in a river with his eyes ripped out.)

"You didn't do it," Shisui says. "You won't do it, it didn't happen. Itachi it's not -"

"It is," Itachi says, and he flinches back when Shisui reaches for him. "It is, it will, I can't - Shisui, we can't -"

Shisui steadies him, a hand on each shoulder, and this time when Itachi flinches his eyes are red and crying. His mangekyou matches the one he had in the vision. He just saw his best friend die. "We can," Shisui tells him. "They're calling a council meeting. They saw. They _all_ saw." Itachi shakes his head, but Shisui is persuasive. It's a talent. "Itachi," he says. "This is the change we've been waiting for. This is our chance. It'll go right, you know it will." He cracks a smile (his teeth are white but so is his face, and his eyes and his hair are black but in the vision his face was red and his eyes were gone) and teases, "Where's the trust, Itachi. When have I ever led you wrong before?"

"Every time you open your mouth," Itachi answers on reflex, but he thinks of dango and sneaking out the window after midnight and the way Shisui laughed when he convinced Itachi to throw a shuriken backwards and broke the neighbour's pot.

"You love me and you know it," Shisui finishes, like he always does, and Itachi huffs in exasperation, like he always does, and for a moment they are good again. Itachi wipes the blood from the cut on his lip and deactivates his sharingan, and packs himself away behind the blank expression on his face.

"If there is a council meeting," he says, "We should go. They'll have questions."

Shisui pulls a face. "God, they always have questions. Your brother's with your mum, I checked for you."

"Aa," Itachi says, and allows himself a brief smile of thanks. In the vision, he made his brother cry. He doesn't know whether that makes it better or worse, because his brother was at least alive to cry. If the thoughts that accompanied the vision were to be believed, the village meant for Sasuke to kill him. On the one hand, there's a poetic justice in it and it's not the worst way to die - but. He made his brother cry. It's not the future he would choose.

The council meeting is long. It's an uphill climb, made worse when Shisui and Itachi appear. The accusations fly: it's a trap, it's a trick, it's an unthinkable impossibility. Hot on their heels comes blame; Danzo, Hiruzen, the village, the clan elders, the clan _youngers_ , Itachi Shisui Madara Fugaku -

At four thirty two, the last vision. It's barely a vision. A dark room, a dark figure; a sly whisper that says, _Did you know? The sharingan controls the kyuubi. Kushina was too stubborn to lose control like that, Minato didn't die he was killed. Did you know?_

It interrupts one elder's impassioned speech about birthrights and authority, and when the vision fades, she doesn't start speaking again.

 _Kyuubi_ , someone whispers.

 _Minato-sama_ , someone else murmurs.

The Uchiha did not always want war. People do not always believe them when they say this. Minato did not live long enough to act on it when he did.

It's Mikoto who stands up. Sasuke is sat next to her, cross-legged because he's too young to be asked to hold seiza for so long, and he looks up at her with wide eyes. He didn't see the visions. He didn't hear the thoughts. He doesn't have his sharingan (he'll activate it on the first of January when the village kills the clan) so all he knows is what he can follow from the elders’ long winded treason and the fact that his brother won't look his way.

She says, "You can die if you like. My sons and I will not."

One of the elders sneers. "Your son is a murderer," he spits, and in the centre of the room, Itachi reinforces his mask until it is stone and does not allow himself to flinch.

"You think he won't kill you because you're his mother?" another jeers. Then another - "Mikoto, sit down, this isn't the time -" and another "- we all saw it, how could you possibly plan for that -"

"I plan," Mikoto says, calmly, her face as stone as Itachi's but her eyes like ice behind it, "To not be here."

There is silence.

"You're retired," Fugaku says, but there's a quirk to his tone that says he trusts she's thought of that. "You can't take a mission, and travel permits are hard to come by."

"So are sons," she replies tartly. "Besides, I promised Kushina I'd take her son to Whirlpool at least once. He deserves to see where he's from."

The response is not immediate - not many bothered to know the kyuubi container enough to know her first name, the red-hot habanero was a title that stuck in the mind - but when it comes, it's disbelieving. _Uzumaki_? The demon brat? What was she thinking - she didn't think _she_ could control the kyuubi, did she? The village would never - the _clan_ would never -

In the centre of the room, Itachi sits frozen. He appreciates what his mother did, deflecting the attention away from him, but it doesn't change the fact that the elders are right. If Mikoto thinks he won't kill her because she's his mother - he doesn't want to finish that sentence. He turns it around in his head, because the truth he's always taken comfort in is this: he would do anything for his brother. He holds on to that, and only that, because in its finality it says everything else that he's going to do - that he knows he'd do, even if he saw it coming, even with Shisui a grounding presence against his side.

Itachi would do anything for his brother. Knowing what anything entails doesn't change that.

He stares straight ahead and lets the arguments roll over him and reminds himself not to scream.

It's not so easy as that, of course. That first council meeting is one, but there are many more. Mikoto does not change her plan. Fugaku does not waver in his support of her. "I married her," he points out when someone asks why he indulges her idiocies. "I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think she was worth listening to."

Other Uchiha trickle in from missions and patrols and one, even, from the brothel in the bad side of town, her hair a coarse blond that marks her a bastard but her eyes still sharingan red. Slowly, surely, the clan pulls itself together. They don't know what they're going to do. Mikoto does, but surely - _leave_? They’ve been in Konoha since before it was Konoha. They can't leave. How dare Konoha - how dare _Mikoto_ \- the Uchiha _are_ Konoha, the founding clan, they named the village and now they're expected to, to _flee_ like criminals when they've done nothing wrong?

"Bollocks," Mikoto says to that one, four questions past the end of her patience. "You've been doing wrong all your life you wretched hag, it's the only reason you're still here to complain about it."

When they grill Itachi, he doesn't swear at them, however much he wants to. In this, he is his father's son - he has Mikoto's control, but he is not yet brave enough not to care about the consequences. His caution is Fugaku's, and Fugaku exercises his caution by filling in the details that will make Mikoto's plans safe. He worries, like he always has, but where Fugaku's worry has driven him to paranoia and impossibly high standards in the past, here it drives him to alibis, faked histories, secret contacts that he never gives more information to than he can spare.

It feels like being twenty three again. Mikoto strides and he follows; Kushina yells and Minato smooths over the ruffled feathers she leaves in her wake. The fear that's been pressing in on him, the desperation, the noose that's been tightening around his neck - it's loosening, now. He's found a way out. He can breathe, and he finds that he can smile, even.

Then Sasuke smiles back and his breath catches and he realises: he has never done that before. Fugaku has never given him reason to. It seemed more important for the clan to live than for his son to smile, but now that Mikoto is dragging the clan to unwilling survival, Fugaku remembers that there was a reason, once, that living was important. He lost it when Minato died. Sasuke was two and a half months old, and Fugaku hasn't smiled at him since then.

"Did you know," he says to his son, one evening when the leaves are turning red and January is creeping closer. "The man on the mountain with the spiky hair, he was nearly your second dad?"

"The Yondaime?" Sasuke asks, curious. He's learnt about the hokages at the academy. Itachi's been too afraid to play with him, and his mother's been too busy staring the clan into submission, so it's his dad who hears about the things he learnt. It's new, and different, and Sasuke wasn't sure at first, but his dad's not as bad as Sasuke used to think. They do homework together these days, though Fugaku's homework is a lot more complicated than Sasuke's is.

"That's how the village knew him," Fugaku says. "His name was Minato. His wife was called Kushina, and she would have been your second mum."

Sasuke wrinkles his nose. "That's stupid," he says. "I have a mum. It's Mum. Why would I need a second?"

He doesn't, Fugaku notice, deny that he'd like a second dad. It stings, but in a way that reminds him he has to do better. He hasn't been a dad for a while, he can't complain about not being granted a title he hasn't earned.

"You'll understand when you're older," he says, because it makes Sasuke scowl. "But that's not the important part. The important part is that they had a son, and in a way, he's your second brother. Your younger brother, even."

Sasuke pauses. "But I have a brother," he says, though Itachi's been avoiding him since the clan meeting. Then, "I really have a second one?"

"Mmhmm. He's even in your class. He doesn't know he's your brother - the village wouldn't let him. They kept him away from us." It's true, though perhaps not in the way that Sasuke would understand it. Perhaps in another time Fugaku would have been hesitant to turn Sasuke against the village like this, but - well. The village won't hesitate to turn against him.

"Tell me," Sasuke demands. His scowl's returned. He looks like his mother, and Fugaku can't help but smile. The Hokage can hardly stop Sasuke from making friends with a classmate, and by the time he thinks to be worried about the Uchiha stealing the kyuubi they'll already be long gone. The smile sours though; there are those in the clan who, like Hiruzen, only see the kyuubi when they talk about bringing Naruto along. But: it's a big clan. There are many who only see the boy, and enough who see either Minato's or Kushina's son. It'll be better than the life he has now, and that's the important part.

But Itachi: when they grill him, he doesn't swear at them. He keeps his face stoic, his voice calm, his mind blank of everything but their answers. He doesn't use his mangekyou, not once, and he doesn't want to know what it does. He tells them about ANBU, about the Hokage, about Danzo. There is not much to tell about Danzo. He is too cautious to leave more than fragments of truth. Itachi tells them anyway.

Some of the clan turn against him. Most of the clan avoid his gaze, that awkward jitter eyes do when someone pretends to have been focussing on something in the distance, the way they skip over him as though it were believable that they didn't know who he was. He is easy to turn against, he knows; his stillness is unnerving, his genius makes people scared. Being good at killing people does not make him good at being one. The best he can do for them is to pretend he doesn't see them as much as they pretend they don't see him.

"They will," Shisui tells him, kicking his ankles against the roof tiles in a way that used to make Itachi wince. He leans forward obnoxiously until he's blocking Itachi's vision and glares, and Itachi looks blankly back and doesn't believe him. "We'll _make_ them see. I was in this as much as you were. If they can accept me they can accept you, and if they can't accept you I'll make them not accept me."

"You died," Itachi points out. "I killed everyone. There's a difference."

"Danzo's a dick," Shisui counters. "Besides, I'm still alive. _Other_ me died because other me was an idiot. I know better than to leave you alone like that. I promise not to let anyone make you kill people you don't want to. Pinky promise. You know me, I'd never break a promise."

"When I was six you promised me the sky was a cereal bowl, and the clouds were made of milk," Itachi says.

"Yeah, well, they might be. Have you ever tried to drink a cloud? Don't be such an unbeliever." He sits back up, angling it in such a way that he sprawls as much against Itachi as against the roof. "I'd never break an important promise. You know that."

Itachi hums. In the garden, Fugaku shows Sasuke how to throw a kunai. Two months ago, Itachi had promised that he would take Sasuke to the training field by the river when he got back from his mission and show Sasuke how to throw anything he wanted, but Itachi broke that promise. He hasn't even been back to the training field by the river. None of them have. It's too dangerous to leave the compound for little things like that.

Itachi pushes himself upright, restless, unable to trust himself this close to his brother. Why is it too dangerous to leave the compound, he wants to know, when the person who killed them all is sat on the roof. Shisui stands up next to him and Itachi allows himself a moment for his blankness to break and he _hates_ that Shisui is so damn fast, he hates that he knows where Itachi will go, he hates that Shisui won't give him just one _chance_ to make things right. 

"Where are we going?" Shisui asks, stretching casually as though he's not following Itachi to stop him slashing a kunai over his eyes. His eyes, his damn eyes that saw Shisui die and mutated to be powerful enough to kill the clan and Itachi just wants _one chance_ \- "I think your mum's still in the meeting. Do you want dango? I'm hungry. I fancy dango."

"You hate dango," Itachi says, but he falls into step next to Shisui anyway. He only hates sometimes. Other times he lies awake at night when it's dark and thinks how terrifying the world would be without him, and he's glad Shisui hasn't let him take his eyes. "You think it's sticky and it gets everywhere."

"What are you, the dango police? I changed my mind. I _used_ to think it was sticky, now I've decided I love its stickiness. It's so... sticky."

Autumn becomes winter. These are the details they hammer out, slowly dragging the Uchiha clan towards safety:

They will go to Uzushio. They will fake their deaths. They will not be Uchiha. They will change the way they look. They will not be ninja, at first. They will not stay in Uzushio. They will take Naruto with them. They will tell him what he is, and they will offer to hide him. When they leave Uzushio, they will go to Rice. They will claim to be refugees. The Uzumaki were the most famous of Whirlpool's clans, but they weren't the only ones - it's a better history to claim than any other they can think of.

There are contracts. Supplies. Fake identities, fake histories, just enough fake alibis that they’ll look like a real clan. They’ll call themselves Uchiwa, because it's similar enough to Uchiha that no one would think to look for it. They can't change their features, not permanently, so they’ll change what they can - their hair, their dress, their styles and manner. It won't be easy, but it will be possible. The Uchiwa will be different. The Uchiwa will survive.

The Uchiwa will take as much time as they need in Uzushio to learn how to be someone else, and when they arrive in Rice, the Uchiha will be long dead. The space between the two is important. No one can realise who they are.

There are other plans: they need bodies, to stand in for the Uchiha dead. They need Itachi, as little as most of them trust him, to dance to Danzo's tune and be the Hokage's murder weapon when the time comes. They need Shisui, and this is a dangerous game because they know when Danzo will take his eye but they don't know how or if Shisui can stop it in time.

From Sasuke, they need Naruto. Sasuke takes to his duties with an enthusiasm that borders on unsubtle, but thankfully he has always been an excitable child and no one thinks it's odd when they see how aggressively he attaches to his new friend. On his part, Naruto is at first confused and at second wary, but midwinter passes and Naruto will follow Sasuke wherever he leads. Only now does the Hokage start to worry about the friendship; he looked at them and saw KushinaAndMikoto, saw MinatoAndFugaku, and Hiruzen's greatest failing has always been that at his heart he’s weak. He should have separated them long before this. It will only cause Naruto pain when the Uchiha situation comes to a head and his best friend is either lost or irrevocably changed, but. Hiruzen kids himself that it won't come to that.

Midwinter passes. That's how close they are now - the first of January is less than two weeks away. Some of the clan have cold feet. Some of them say they should already have gone. The first members of the clan are already out, paving the way for the others to follow. Fugaku makes sure to sneer at Hiruzen in the council meetings and it feels odd on his face. He's got too used to smiling to remember how his hatred fits.

(Sasuke has been taking bentos in for Naruto for the past month and a half, but with Mikoto so busy Fugaku's been learning to cook. They tried to make animals out of the onigiri last night and they dyed the rice orange to shape it into a fox, but the dye stained their hands and it turns out neither of them are good at animal shapes. Fugaku isn't used to failing in a way that doesn't get people killed, and Sasuke isn't used to failing full stop, and when Mikoto came home they'd cooked all the rice in the house in an effort to make the perfect fox and frozen like little kids when she flicked on the kitchen light.)

(Fugaku took an orange riceball to Itachi's room for him. Itachi wasn't there.)

One week. The report comes back, hidden in a box of tea. A large box, one that will last for weeks, the size they'd order if they thought they were still going to be here to drink it, because if the village find out at this late stage then everything they've done will be lost. Mikoto reads the report at midnight when she's just got back home, and her face is still politely blank but behind the facade she runs through calculations and stifles a grimace. It'll be hard. They have less supplies than they thought. She makes a mental note and lets Fugaku know what she needs to fix the shortfall, and he kisses her on the cheek and promises he'll have the details sorted by the time the sun comes up.

Sleep is for the dead and those who would join them. There is too much to do to sleep.

Four days. Danzo makes his move; Shisui runs, and runs and runs and runs and lets the fake wound drop real blood and throws himself in the river and swims to the other side -

"Itachi," he says, looking at Konoha for the last time. "I'll see you soon. God, please let me see you soon."

Two days. The blonde half-Uchiha, the overlooked one from the brothel, quietly hands in her resignation and leaves. She's from the slums. No one notices when she goes. There'll be a warrant put out for her arrest when her resignation is found in the morning, but she'll be long gone by then - and the police will be gone soon after. She goes to the first of many contacts and grins when they're surprised; they thought they were dealing with the Uchiha's spymaster, not a rough-speaking bastard whore. They are. She is. She gets what she needs from them and sends Mikoto the all clear in a packet of nori sheets.

One day. Mikoto rests a hand against Itachi's cheek. They don't smile, either of them; these are their battle faces, and they are blank and calm and quiet. "My son," she says, and he bows his head and admits: "I would have killed you if it kept him safe."

She raises her other hand, until she's cradling his face, and strokes her thumbs over his cheeks. "I know," she says.

For a second, his mask cracks and his eyes flash mangekyou red - he scrambles back behind it, forcing it to sit between him and the rest of the world. "I would have _killed_ you," he repeats, broken and desperate and Fugaku moulded him into his perfect weapon but where is Fugaku now, he's hiding the Uchiha's fortune in paperwork while Sasuke sits next to him and checks Naruto's homework for him and Itachi's battleface is his mother’s but at heart he's his father's son and all he wants is to keep his brother safe -

"Itachi," his mother says, still stroking her thumbs over his cheeks. "One day, when they think we're dead, I will come back and burn this village to the ground for what it's done to you." He stares back at her helplessly, and she tilts their foreheads together and presses her nose against his. "My _son_ ," she repeats. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that it had to be you."

He closes his eyes. They stay there for a long moment, and Shisui's only been gone a few days but it's enough time for Itachi to forget he can be grounded. He matches his breaths to his mother’s and she counts for them both, and he remembers again the him he saw in the vision. The streets ran red, he stood with a sword in his hand and his eyes so carefully blank you could see the scream behind them. He didn't recognise himself.

When he opens his eyes again, they are black. He doesn't have Shisui now, but he will. He has his mother. He has his brother, even if he can't trust himself to get close, and he has his father, even if his father doesn't know how to talk to him. He can be his mother's son for one more day.

"I will make you proud," he says.

She smiles, and it's the first time she's dropped her own mask since a little past ten on what was otherwise a fairly standard summer day. "I am," she tells him. "I already am."

On the final day, Danzo gives the order. The Hokage does not. This doesn't matter. The village will kill the Uchihas either way.

By the time Obito arrives, the Uchiha are all but gone. Bodies litter the streets, and the last couple of people take artistic licence with the way they spatter the blood. They have taken great care to poison the eyes of the corpses they've left behind, and if Danzo would like them he's welcome to them. Some of the houses hold replicas of important artefacts, and Itachi has instructions to burn them; other houses are full of personal belongings that he is to leave untouched. It's important to uphold the illusion that they didn't know he was coming.

Obito wanders through the compound, uncertain and unsure. It's the first of January. This is the day the Uchiha clan dies. He's been waiting for it for over ten years. Now that it's here and now that they are already dead - that they seem to be already dead - it's odd. He always thought he'd be doing the killing.

(Underground, through the tunnels, there was one more lost Uchiha the sharingan visions brought home: at a little past ten on that summer day he was in one of the blank, white rooms under the village that wasn't supposed to exist. Danzo stole him and the sharingan stole him back, and now he leads his entire clan out through the old ROOT tunnels that no one knows to check. He is not yet at the stage where he can appreciate the irony of Danzo's ROOT leading Danzo's victims to safety, but he's a lot more of a person than he used to be and he'll only get more so as he grows.)

There is a figure in the centre of the compound. It should be Itachi. That's what Obito's plans say, that's what Obito agreed when he talked to Itachi before. Except - if it were Itachi, the Uchiha clan would be alive, waiting for Obito to kill them. If it were Itachi, they'd be small and short and staring blankly forward as though that would hide the way they were afraid. If it were Itachi, Obito wouldn't hesitate, and hold his gunbai warily in front of him like a shield.

"My son thinks you're Madara," Mikoto says. Her voice is like ice. _Red hot_ was never her nickname.

Obito doesn't move. "And what do you think?" he asks, cautious, testing.

"Does it matter?" She doesn't wait for him to answer. "Minato thought he recognised you," she says next, and her eyes glitter when Obito fails to hide his reaction. "I wondered." She switches then, her tone light, almost teasing. "Did you know? The sharingan can control the kyuubi."

At the gate, Itachi stands; he is bloody, and behind his mask his eyes are mangekyou-red and wild. "Otouto," he says, and it's the first time he's spoken to his brother in almost six months. Sasuke pauses, shifting until he's standing in front of Naruto, and Naruto looks between his best friend and the unfamiliar boy that's threatening him. When he growls, his canines are sharp, and his eyes, when he narrows them, are red.

It's a different red, perhaps, to the sharingan, but the warning behind it is the same. He knows that he and Sasuke are leaving. He knows that Sasuke's family is in danger, and the village has to believe he's dead. He knows, in theory, that Sasuke has another brother and the other brother would do anything for him - but the reality is that Itachi looks barely sane and Sasuke is scared, and lightly has never been the way that Naruto loves.

"Ah," Obito says, flicking his gaze away from the scene and back to where Mikoto waits. "I heard rumours that your son had befriended him. I thought you, of all people, would be above using him." There is something bitter in him when he continues: "I should have known better. You are Uchiha."

"I am," Mikoto replies. She lifts her hand in a single handseal and Obito tenses; the Itachi by the gate flickers and disperses. The Sasuke and the Naruto waver, and then they too are gone. The scene they acted played out and finished long before Obito arrived, but the genjutsu has bought her the diversion she needs and when Obito swings the gunbai at her she's already gone.

"Obasan," Shisui says, falling into step with her. His expression is serious, but the tug at his lips is victorious; he uses a different battle face to her. "Itachi is safe. He has the kids. Fugaku is out. The clan is at the first meeting point."

Obito attacks again - they split; Shisui is fast enough to keep him occupied for a second, and Mikoto's fire is angry enough that a second is all she needs. It burns blue from the heat and one day she'll be back to spread it over the whole village for what they dared to do to her sons - but for now, she follows the plan. She tones the flames down until they're red like Itachi's flames would be, and she scorches buildings and chars bodies and leaves just enough marks and burns just enough evidence to be believable. Shisui flies back and pulls her into a faster shunshin than anyone could ever hope to match and Obito curses as they leave him behind; they run for the tunnel, and from the tunnel to the exit, and from the exit to freedom.

It is the first of January, and the village has killed the Uchiha clan.

It is the first of January, and Danzo takes the poisoned eyes from the corpses even before the blood has cooled.

It is the first of January, and Itachi has bowed to the Hokage and lied to him through the last report he'll ever give; it is the first of January, and Hiruzen has lost not only the last surviving Uchiha he was meant to have, but also the village's only jinchuuriki.

With it, he lost Minato's son, Kushina's son, a little boy who looked up to him as a grandfather and wanted to be Hokage one day to be just like him. Hiruzen will not realise this until a lot later, when Teuchi asks after Naruto in concern and Hiruzen remembers there was a child attached to his weapon. It will be too late by then, but Hiruzen will remember all the same.

But:

It is the second of January, and Mikoto rests her forehead against her oldest son's forehead and counts his breathing with him, and both of them put their masks aside.

She kneels, and asks Sasuke to introduce her to his friend, and when Naruto shyly says hello she says, "Naruto, is it? Did you know, your mother named you after a swirl because she thought it looked like a whirlpool? She told your dad she got it from a book, but I think he always knew."

In the background, Fugaku stifles a snort. "Please," he says. "Kushina could have told him anything and Minato would believe it. A book is hardly the most far fetched thing she convinced him of."

Naruto watches, wide eyed, and Sasuke looks on with smug satisfaction: Iruka is too young, yet, to be Naruto's brother-parent figure, and though Naruto hadn't disagreed with him it was obvious he hadn't believed that Sasuke's parents would be kind.

Shisui sidles up to Itachi, standing too close and grinning irreverently when Itachi notices. "You did it," he says. "We made it out. Told you you could."

Itachi pushes him off, but doesn't move away. "We're not done yet," he says, but his battle mask is down. He smiles, faintly, briefly, because his brother is happy and his parents are alive and Shisui never fell in a river and died. He is still a boy (he is only a boy) who would murder the clan to save his brother, but he is also a boy who didn't have to, and for now - that is enough.

He is right though. They aren't done. The clan gather in Whirlpool slowly, moving through a sprawling network of disguises and alibis. Some of them are shaken, not believing until the end that the village would turn on them like that; some of them are angry. Some of them are just old, and travel is hard. Some of them are young, and their parents are struggling because a baby is hard enough without being a refugee on the run.

They lose some members along the way. This is good, this is important and this is part of the plan - Konoha knows how big the Uchiha were. The Uchiwa cannot be the same because the Uchiwa cannot be found. Besides, the world is big, and Konoha hoards its travel permits; why shouldn't you go to Tea when you've lost everything and Tea will offer a job? It's more interesting than staying at home and dying. You're still part of the clan, you still keep an ear to the ground and pass messages, and the wider network can only be good in the end. They don’t stop being Uchiha, Uchiwa, those cousins in Tea, clan means more than neighbour and family is deeper than blood.

But: slowly, cautiously, the clan gather in Whirlpool.

The first step is to not be recognisable. Uchiha are tall, on the whole, and feminine; they have black hair that is thick and tends to fluff up when it's short. Or, on some, when it's long. Their eyes are black, except when they're red, and they're serious and stuffy and old.

They can't not be tall. They can't very easily not be feminine either; bone structures are difficult things to rearrange. They can be loud though, and bold, in a way that makes them look less delicate; they can dye their hair, and they can stop being serious and instead be silly and bright and fun.

... They can't. Not really. Some of them have spent half a century being who they are, it isn't an easy thing to change.

They have to though because they have to survive. Hair is an easy thing to change; they bleach it, binding it with jutsu to make it as permanent as they can. They mean to go blonde, to match their bastard whore who made enough connections to become their spymaster - but, bleach is a tricky thing. Their hair is too dark, and when the roots grow out, it's obvious what they've done. Those of the clan who weren't happy to dye it in the first place take this as a sign that they should go back to black. It's a common colour. What's one more black haired clan among so many others? Fugaku worries too much. People only listen to Mikoto because she doesn't need to raise her voice to shout, not because there’s any value in what she has to say.

Order is fragile, and precious - Uzushio, like Mikoto predicted, is _difficult_. They have supplies, but not as many as they'd like, and once the fear of the massacre settles people start griping over the things they left behind. Distance makes everything seem better than it was and there are those who start doubting that there ever would have been a massacre if Mikoto's brat hadn't been too weak to know where his loyalties lay.

There are no plans. No, there are - but they're too... _nebulous_. When we are ready? Who decides? When the danger dies down - how can you tell? Give us the milestones, give us the data, who said you were qualified to lead? You're the clan head's wife not the clan head, and besides. We're Uchiwa now, aren't we? Fugaku led the Uchiha but I don't see them anywhere here.

"I do," Mikoto says viciously, her face going blank and cold. She makes them bleach their hair again, and she covers it this time with dye. Not red, they aren't Uzumaki and that isn't a heritage she wants to steal, and not brown, however easy that would be to blend in. She makes them dye it pink, deep magenta, purple tones with shockingly fuchsia highlights. She doesn't bare her teeth and she doesn't raise her voice but she stares them down until they obey. Over her shoulder, Shisui flicks his eyes mangekyou-red and grins; his battle face was always different to hers.

(Itachi doesn't come to the meetings. He sits with his father and helps with the paperwork, quietly, steadily, face blank but sometimes forgetting himself enough to frown. The web of contacts that support the Uchiwa are fragile, and the trade connections they're trying to build are a delicate balancing act of resources and future growth. It's fascinating, in a way that arterial spray had never managed to be, and sometimes it's distracting enough that he forgets he's a murderer who was robbed of the chance to prove it.)

There are reasons for the pink hair. Mikoto shares them with any who ask; for those who don't ask, she flings them like kunai and makes people understand anyway. First, it's ridiculous. A whole clan, pink haired? It has to be genetic. No one would ever dye it like that. Brown, maybe, that's a classic choice for someone trying to blend in - but pink? It's so unsubtle it's subtle in its unsubtlety, as Shisui delights in teaching Naruto to say.

Second: it's eye catching. What do you remember when you see someone with pink hair? Their eyes? The curve of their nose, their high cheekbones? No. You remember the hair, and only the hair, and the face underneath is invisible. The Uchiwa could look like anything, and no one would know because, most of all, the Uchiwa look magenta and the Uchiha did not.

Third: there is very little that is delicate or stuffy or serious about a clan of people with pink hair. Mikoto says this is to further distance them from the Uchiha. What she doesn't say, but Shisui understands, is that this is to further distance them from themselves.

When Naruto looks in the mirror, he sees a little boy with pink hair standing next to his brother who also has pink hair. Sometimes he sees his other pink-haired brother hovering somewhere behind them, not yet brave enough to come close, but doing well enough, now, not to stay away. He doesn't see the boy with no family who looked different from the rest of the village and never knew how to fit in.

When Fugaku looks in the mirror he sees a man with laugh lines instead of frowns, with hands calloused from calligraphy pens and not from kunai. The pink hair is silly, and bright, and it reminds him of being young and believing that the village would accept them and looking at another young man who could be silly and was always bright. He doesn't see a desperate failure trapped in a corner and blamed for fighting back.

When Itachi looks in the mirror, he looks through it. He wears his hair down, not tied back, and every time he leans forward it gets in his face and annoys him. It's impractical. It's attention grabbing, and goes against everything he was taught both as an Uchiha and an ANBU. He doesn't look in the mirror, but if he did, he'd see someone clearly too foolish to be used as a weapon; maybe, when he does get round to looking, he'll see someone capable of being something else.

Shisui and Mikoto, they see battle faces under pink hair. There is no difference there. There is not meant to be.

Again: it is not so easy as that. There are still some in the clan that fight them, kicking and screaming; there are some more they lose, taking themselves off to find better futures on their own. There are some they gain, tiny ones, married ones, not-so-tiny ones that were hungry and that started joining in, because the Uchiwa understand what it's like to not be wanted in a way the Uchiha never allowed themselves to.

On the whole, though, they move forwards. They have to. They chose trades, and they try to keep them consistent. Cloth, they go for; it's cheap and easy to get started, and they have enough fine silk salvaged from the compound to pad out their range of wares. Embroidery is easy to do with no workshop to do it in, and the sharingan turns fine details into works of art. They experiment, some with the studious discipline that's been expected of them all their lives, some with bursts of colour and excitement that they've never been allowed to express.

They make enough, eventually, to start selling it. Their camp is in the ruins, in the old houses on the shorelines around Uzushio. The first cloth they practised on was tents; enough of them are ninja to know how to strike a temporary camp, and enough of them are practical to know how to turn it into something that will survive. The second cloth was clothes - Uchiha clothes are too fine, too old for the Uchiwa. They practice their embroidery on their skirts, sew scrap-ends of new fabric into jackets, patch up their knees with vibrant orange flowers.

"If my hair's pink," one says, "Then I need my dress to match."

"If my hair's pink," another says, "Then I need my shirt to be bright enough to draw attention away from it."

"If my hair's pink," a third says, "Then I'm shaving it off."

Not everything they put together works. A lot of them are unused to expressing themselves. It's a work in progress, but it's one that seems more individual for it. The little boy from the ROOT tunnels, the one who was learning to be a person - he watched what everyone did, then took a careful square of cloth from each of them and stitched a patchwork cloak. You couldn't call it artistic, or aesthetic, or even particularly cohesive, but the stitches were neat and he refined it over the months with more patches from the people he knew particularly well, and it's his.

He wears it when they make that momentous first trip to the neighbouring town, pink hair falling loose over his shoulders and clashing with every second square. They've been to the town before, enough to establish a presence and enough to build a rapport with local suppliers of fish and rice - but this time, they come with samples, bags, simple clothes. Someone found a wool trader and Fugaku hashed out a deal while Itachi watched, and in the next visit, they tell the town, they'll bring knitted things. A small group of them have split off from the needleworkers; they're too old, their eyes too weak and their hands too arthritic. They make dyes instead, boiling concoctions and testing how well the colours hold, and one of them used to make poisons for T&I and has a wealth of knowledge that she likes to drop at random moments.

"This is ridiculous," someone says, enough months down the line that most people have settled into being pink and patchwork and got the hang of touching up their hair when the roots start growing black. "I didn't think they were serious. Surely we can go back now, we've indulged this long enough."

"But," someone else says, hesitant. "I don't want to."

"You can't tell me that this is better than what we had?" the first asks, making a disparaging gesture at - well, all of them. Their half houses-half tents with colourful birds embroidered overhead; the clashing mix of silk kimonos and rough woven shirts they wear, all of it intricately detailed in a way only the sharingan can produce; the bright hair in various states of shaved or undercut or left to grow long and loose and get in the way.

"Oh," the second says. They look around, and among the colours they see the cooking pot that people gather round in the evenings because there're no politics calling them away; the gifts of cakes and bread from the town because they don't have ovens in the tents but they have friends who give them things instead; the way people smile and laugh and frown and cry because Uchiwa are not Uchiha and no one ever told Uchiwa that they couldn't. "I thought it was."

The first scoffs, and frowns in disgust, and these too are things the Uchiha were never allowed to do. But, they are Uchiwa now. They can be loud in their disagreements as well as their joy. It's part of life, so the second listens to their complaints, and when they get to a shared annoyance (the beds, it must be said, were a lot softer in the old compound, however much straw they shove under the mats they sleep on now) they complain together until their neighbour joins in, and the neighbour brings tea and tea turns the topic to the new shipment young Itachi secured for them - did you hear, the first says, leaning forward eagerly to share; did you hear, he got us _matcha_ , now that's a boy who understands the important things in life. None of this make do nonsense with watered down barley swill, we'll be drinking matcha by time the week is out. Fugaku should let him out more, I say! Boy like that, he'll do the clan good, mark my words he will.

Six months ago, when they were Uchiha and the clan was hurtling towards a massacre they didn't know they'd be prepared for, the same person said: if he's the one who'll kill us, wouldn't it be easier if he wasn't here?

People are capricious when they're afraid. They're capricious when they move past fear and start testing their boundaries as well, and Shisui flashes a lot of teeth as he keeps Mikoto's peace.

When spring fades into summer again, the Uchiwa move. The clan is bigger than it was when they first came to Uzushio, and the Uchiha are far behind - there are those in the clan who've never been to Konoha, or seen an Uchiha, but Uzushio was just as ruined as the old compound was and there are always refugees. Mikoto's not clear when the Uchiwa stopped being refugees and started being their own people, but she's glad of the change, for all the headaches it brings. She forgets, sometimes, that Naruto was not always her son. He smiles like Kushina though, bright and unafraid in a way the Uchiwa have learnt to copy, and he has never learnt to pull on a battle mask.

"We'll wait for you," some of them say, settling deeper into the vibrant home they've made in the ruins. It's hard to tell now where the old Uzushio houses end and the tents begin; some of the new members they've picked up brought old Uzushio skills of tile-glazing, and they've built a kiln far enough away from the tents to be safe and decorated the walls with sea-greens and achingly sky blues.

But, unlike before, they haven't lost these ones, the ones that stay. They aren't like the Uchiha that went to ground, or the Uchiwa that peeled off in disgust. These are Uchiwa, in patchwork clothing with pink hair and open faces; they're just Uchiwa with friends in the neighbouring town, or bones that complain on the road, or children too small to join the caravan this year. They're Uchiwa, but they're home, and when the rest of the clan come back in the autumn they'll be waiting to hear the stories. Itachi scored not just matcha but kombucha in the latest shipment delivery and tea and gossip is an Uchiwa tradition as old as the clan, so he best bring them something good when he comes back.

Itachi nods, serious, face settled in polite lines he never quite learnt to break out of. It makes him a negotiator to be feared, and those outside the clan wonder how someone so cold could have been chosen to represent so flamboyantly raucous a clan.

"Cold?" they say, laughing, offended, confused; they all wear their emotions on their sleeves. "No, you just have to know him. Watch him with his brothers, then you'll see. It's all in the eyes, that one. He smiles with his eyes."

Sometimes, Shisui is angry at them all for how easily they seem to forget. He remembers when Mikoto was soft and Fugaku was hard, when Itachi needed him and Sasuke was lonely and always tagged at their heels. Now Sasuke is loud and Naruto is louder, and Itachi follows after them with an indulgent amusement. He smiles, and Shisui doesn't need to make him; he blinks his eyes mangekyou-red to memorise a contract and never even thinks to strike them out with a kunai. Fugaku laughs, belly-deep and booming, and Itachi tilts his head and his hair spills over his shoulder in a wave of carefree pink.

The clan have moved on. They aren't scared, anymore, nor resentful. Or if they are, they're resentful of the weather and the salt in the breeze, or the way their favourite spindle spins backwards ever since they lent it to their friend. No one trains, and there are no missions, and sometimes Shisui looks at himself with his viciousness and the smiles he plasters over it and he thinks, who am I, without someone to protect? He spent so long keeping Itachi afloat he doesn't know how to swim for himself.

Mikoto isn't Itachi. She doesn't need him. She appreciates him, and he makes her life easier, but - she isn't Itachi. Mikoto is steel, and anger, and she has sold her soul to revenge and is happy with it. She has dragged the Uchiwa into existence and she will force them to keep going until there is no trace of Uchiha left, and then she will leave them with Fugaku who laughs and Itachi who smiles and she'll take herself and her rage and she'll burn Konoha to the ground for what they did.

Shisui wonders if he was meant to save her the way he saved Itachi, but. He didn't save Itachi in the end. Itachi saved Itachi, or maybe Fugaku did, or Sasuke or Naruto or Mikoto who brought him home. Shisui kept him alive until then, that's all. It's ironic, isn't it, that he was always the Uchiha with emotions, but he doesn't know to be an Uchiwa who knows what to do with them.

"We'll go north," Mikoto says, plotting a route that takes them through Hot Water and skirts the edge of Fire. "Frost, Iron - we'll make good sales. Iron has some materials we need for the glazers, and Frost is famous for silk."

"Frost borders Cloud," Shisui says, frowning. They aren't an Uchiwa enemy, but old grudges run deep. "If we go south through Wave, then round to River... The boat would be faster, and it'd take us through cousins in Tea."

She hums, considering. "I don't want to take the boat in autumn," she says, frowning. "A round trip? We'd get to Rice later than I intended, but the extra ground would be good."

Shisui waits; he was always more suited to the battlefield than to war, and the planning Mikoto does moves too many pieces for him to track. She purses her lips and shakes her head. "Not this year. Frost and Iron; we can expand our range when we're more confident. We'll be careful near Cloud, but they've no reason to be hostile."

He doesn't like it, but he understands. If it comes to it, his shunshin is faster now that it was before, and he has more reason to fight for his clan than he ever did for Konoha.

"Next year will be yours," Mikoto says, almost idly enough to be throw-away except she never says anything she doesn't mean. He stills, face tugging into a challenging smirk as he watches her.

"Oh yeah? Getting too old, Obasan? Finally going to retire again and leave the caravan to me?"

She raises an eyebrow. "The Uchiha is in Rain," she says, and Shisui drops his mask in surprise. He hadn't forgotten - of course he hadn't forgotten the Uchiha that was waiting for them with the gunbai when he and Mikoto set fire to the compound. He hadn't realised though that Mikoto was still looking. He hadn't realised she'd had time, the Uchiwa were hardly easy to lead.

"Let me come with you," he says, too quickly, too fast, and he struggles to pull his lazy confidence back over himself. "Rain isn't far. We'll be there and back before the caravan's even ready to leave."

"I'm not going this year. Rain is far enough from Rice that it won't be an issue, but if you're cutting south through River next summer then you'll be too close for comfort. I'll go in the spring to make sure it's safe for you - if you don't hear back, stick to the northern route again."

"Then I'll go with you next spring," he insists. "Mikoto -"

"No." She doesn't frown at him. It's not blank, not quite, he's the only person left she never does that to (do her family even notice anymore, he wonders bitterly, when she's soft and kind and smiles, do they even see the anger she's hiding from them) but it's tight, muscles controlled and face serious in a way he can't argue back against. "The Uchiwa need you, Shisui. Stay with the clan."

He laughs. It's not a nice sound. "They're traders," he says. "Traders and merchants and weavers. All they care about is tea. They don't need me."

She pauses. It stretches too long, and he bristles under the attention. He's a ninja. He's always been a ninja. It's not so easy for him to forget; leadership is just another battle, and he hasn't stopped fighting for a long long time. He wears his hair pink and his clothes a sharp collection of patchwork blacks, he eats from the communal pots and he sleeps on a mat in a colourful tent; he gets up early to train and when he's restless he runs night watch, he bares his teeth until people play nice and he doesn't trust the town that they buy their food from, he's glad that Itachi's happy but he doesn't know how to talk to this new and different version of his friend and the Uchiwa replaced the Uchiha but two of them still remain.

He is still Uchiha. With her fire and her anger and her hate, so is she.

"It's dangerous to be kind," she finally says, flicking her eyes away. "People take advantage of you. If your heart is open, it can bleed."

"I am not kind, Obasan," he says.

"No." She looks back at him. "They are. I put a lot of effort into making sure they could be. Someone has to keep looking after them when I'm gone."

He freezes. His breath catches in his throat and his sharingan flicks on without his consent, but there's no lie that he can see in her face. She's calm. Not blank - calm. She is resolved, and he will not change her mind. She is not asking him to.

"I can't do what you do," he says, and his voice sticks on the words. Is this what it's like to be Uchiwa, to say what you mean and not hide your emotions behind false confidence and spite? He doesn't like it. "Mikoto, I'm not you. I can't be _you_."

"I'm not asking you to be," she says. "If I wanted me I would have waited until Sasuke was older. But I'm glad that he won't grow up to be me, and I'm glad that you didn't either." She sighs, and there is something sad in her expression when she does. "Shisui, I chose my path the day I learnt what Konoha would force my sons to do, but I spent too many years before that becoming the person who could make that choice. I am Uchiha. I was made Uchiha and I will die Uchiha. The clan needed me once, but they aren't Uchiha any more."

"I am," he says. It hurts. How can words hurt?

"No," she says again, and he feels a surge of anger - shouldn't he know who he is? Shouldn't he be the one to say that he is Uchiha Shisui, that Uchiwa Shisui is just another mask? Hair dye is _barely_ skin deep. "I saw Uchiha Shisui," she continues, merciless. "He fought until there was no way out and it killed him."

"That's still me," he argues hotly. "I'd still do that, if you let me come with you -"

"No. It's not." She gentles her voice, but it's no less powerful when she continues. "It can't be, Shisui. They need you. Who else will make sure they're allowed to be kind?"

He closes his eyes. They sting. Not tears; salt. When your eyes are too dry for tears, and all that's left is pain. "I don't know how," he says, broken. "Mikoto, please. I can't do it by myself."

With his eyes closed he doesn't see her move, but he feels her hands cupping his chin, her thumbs running over his cheekbones as though smoothing away the tears he isn't crying. "I know," she says. "That's why it has to be you."

"But if you're not here -"

"They are," she interrupts, gently, but not kindly. There is steel in her words; she isn't kind. "They are, and more will be. Work with them, Shisui. They need you, and you need them; it's what makes you Uchiwa, even if you don't see it yet."

He swallows against his defeat. They don't need _him_. They need someone to protect them so they can be kind. Any ninja could do it. It doesn't have to be him. And he doesn't need them; all he needs is someone to live for because he doesn't know how to live for himself. Anyone would do.

But... maybe that's enough. There's nothing special about him, and there's nothing special about them. They're just people, each with something the other wants. Traders. God. He doesn't even like tea.

He pulls his mask over his face and pulls his mouth into a cocky grin that shows his teeth. "When you get to Konoha," he says, in a voice that barely shakes. "Make them bleed."

She nods, sitting back with her eyes glittering. "Always," she promises.

Maybe he was meant to save her. Maybe she was meant to be the someone he had to live for. He kept Itachi afloat long enough for him to find his way out of the secrets and the death that plagued ninja life, maybe he was meant to do the same for her. But he didn't. He doesn't know if anyone could - she wants to be where she is, with a fierceness he doesn't think anyone could stop. And when she's gone, she wants him to be where he is, making sure the Uchiha stay dead and keeping the Uchiwa alive in their place.

"Good," he says, and she drops her hands from his face and smiles.

They go north that summer. The caravan is small, not all of them that wanted to come could make it in the end, and Sasuke and Naruto run alongside yelling an ever more impossible list of things Itachi has to bring back for them. Fugaku stays with them; Shisui is with Itachi and Mikoto in the caravan. It's important, Mikoto said, to leave the clan without them. This summer they are still two, and one of them can run back if they are needed - what takes weeks for the caravan is barely days for them. But next summer, it will just be Shisui. If there are problems, they need to know before she isn't there to sort them out.

They don't expect there to be. Fugaku used to run the clan once, for all he's softer now. Still, though, Uchiwa are loud, and gossip, and vent their emotions to stop them clogging up their thoughts - perhaps softer is what they need, and Fugaku is good at listening. Already, Shisui is trying to plan what he'll do, how he'll handle it, because he wasn't wrong in what he said. He isn't Mikoto. He can't be the leader she is.

He shouldn't be the leader she is. She is war, and the Uchiwa are trying to be at peace. Working with Fugaku, and, later, working with Itachi; these are things Shisui will need when she is gone.

But: they go north. Through Hot Water, through Frost; through Rice and briefly into Iron, then back into Rice again. They set up a temporary camp, enough to act as a base while Itachi makes his connections. They're more reserved in Rice than in Uzushio, and here his quiet is charming rather than cold. He adds hojicha to the boxes of tea, and when Shisui rolls his eyes and asks if he's planning to open a shop, Itachi says that he was considering it. The tea ceremonies they grew up with are considered old fashioned in a lot of places, and though there's a lot to be said for more informal company there's something soothing about the repetitive motions of the ceremony that he thinks their people would like.

"Soothing?" Shisui asks, grinning. "Us? We're loud and pink, Itachi. There's nothing soothing about us."

"Maybe," he says, diplomatic, "But sometimes people talk a lot to hide the things they don't know how to say." He pauses, and there's something hesitant in the way he continues: "I know not everyone likes tea. I just think that, sometimes, they'd like something soothing."

It's hesitant, and he's diplomatic, but Shisui isn't blind. He can read between the lines, and something in him aches to know that Itachi, who he looked out for for so long, who he circled and protected and kept alive is now trying to do the same thing back to him. With tea. Because he's an Uchiwa, and that's what Uchiwa do.

It's not just Shisui though, is it. A year is not enough to change a lifetime, and as much as the Uchiwa are loud and pink, they also need time to be quiet. In the night, in the early morning, sometimes in the middle of the day - people grow at different rates, and sometimes they can spend days at a time being patchwork and then find a hole in the cloth that sends them back to the start.

He pauses. When he thinks of it that way, the tea ceremony would help. Not everything Uchiha was bad. Being Uchiwa means remembering where you came from, not just knowing where you are. Being Uchiwa means that sometimes you have a long way to go, but there's someone to help you get there, even if it's only with a sit and a gossip and tea. Uchiwa drink a lot of tea.

"Well," he finally says. "If you want a tea ceremony, you need a proper pot. If I run us to Iron we'll be back before dinner." He grins, lopsided, not sure how to do it without showing teeth. "What do you reckon? Are you too old for a piggyback, or do you trust me to bring back a good one?"

"One," Itachi repeats, incredulous. "You think we need one pot. You have no idea how to do business, I'm not letting you go anywhere near a tea shop by yourself." The words are teasing, but he softens them with a smile, small and happy and kind and oh. This, Shisui realises, is what he's meant to protect. This is what Mikoto fought her war for, and this is what Shisui will keep for her.

"Fighting talk," he says, blinking around the sting in his eyes, and turns to offer his back. "Hop on, Uchiwa. Let's go."

In the autumn, when they return, they bring sobacha and gobocha to add to the tea chest, and bamboo whisks and handled pots and cups and bowls and a low table inlaid with dark and light wood that's patterned like a cherry blossom sprig. They bring new cloth and new dyes, memories of new patterns captured by the sharingan and new ideas to incorporate them. Itachi didn't bring everything off the list for Sasuke and Naruto, but he has a whole box of wagashi sweets that he'd carefully collected as he went. They are brightly coloured, and shaped like flowers and leaves and tiny fruit, and those that stayed behind threw a festival for those that went to Rice and the sweets sit on the trays next to the cakes from the neighbouring town and the stews from the communal pot and it's right. Shisui looks around at the tents and the tiles and the children and the old people, the uncomfortable beds and the mismatched clothes and the way people laugh at the stories they tell, and he thinks, oh. This, too. This is home. This is worth protecting.

There were bandits on the road. A caravan like theirs - it's a tempting prospect, and everyone's hair is pink. None of them wore flak jackets or carried weapons; none of them had headbands and they'd hired no ninjas to keep them safe. The bandits thought they'd be easy pickings. So did some missing nin.

The others never saw them. Shisui is fast, but more than that: he has something to protect. It did not escape his notice that Mikoto left him to it. Guard duty has never been her style, but it suits Shisui well; around the caravan when they travel, around the camp over winter. There are ways, he thinks, to teach people to be strong enough to be safe without breaking them until they're sharp. There is a difference between a person who protects and a weapon that kills, and if he can learn to be the former then maybe he can teach it too. Sometimes, he thinks, watching Naruto fidget through a tea ceremony and swipe away some of the tears from the nightmares he doesn't think he should have anymore, sometimes it can help. People who feel safe are more able to be kind.

But Mikoto will never be kind. Winter passes, it is the first of January and the clan remembers. Then it is the second, the third, and it's been another year and they are still alive. Come spring, Mikoto is gone. Come summer, she sends a message in a box of tea, and Shisui takes the caravan the long route round the south.

Autumn, there is no word.

Winter.

The first of January.

On the third the news reaches them: the Hokage is dead. Konoha burns. The last of the Uchiha is no more.

In the town next door it's a story, something they heard about a place they know someone who's been to. Fire country is large, and Konoha rarely looked beyond its borders.

In the camp, it's a day of mourning. They light fires - this is the Uchiha way, but Mikoto was Uchiha. So were they, once. In many ways, so they still are. They light fires, and they keep them burning until the sun rises, and when the sun is up they gather the children and carry them back to the tents to sleep.

They drink tea. They gossip, though quietly, and some of them join Shisui in the fields to train. The katas they run through are slow, meditative things, and, like the tea ceremony, they help. No one thinks to celebrate the death of the Hokage, even if some of them are darkly satisfied to see him go. Revenge is not an Uchiwa trait.

In the evening, they make dinner in large pots on the fire, and they add patches of red to their clothes, and they look to Shisui as the new leader. In truth, he's been leading them for a lot longer than this, but the Uchiwa remember when they were Uchiha and they fled, and their friends and their cousins scattered through Tea and through Wave - and even, some of them, through Fire. You do not stop being part of the clan because you don't live with the clan. Uchiwa are not defined by their pink hair. Mikoto was as much theirs as she was the Uchiha's, and this did not change when she left. It has not changed now she's died.

He was never meant to save her, Shisui decides. She didn't need saving, she wouldn't have let him if he tried - but that's not the point.

He looks out over the people he calls his, the friend he's fumbled his way through reconnecting with, the sea of colourful scraps sewn together to make the place that's his home. He thinks of the boy he once saw on the edge of the river, with his face blood-red and his teeth white against it as he grinned. The boy died. He had nowhere to go and he fought and he died, and the point wasn't that he was meant to save her. The point was that she saved that boy when she stood up in the council meeting and said, _You can die if you like. My sons and I will not._

"Mikoto," he says. Mother.

It's fitting, he thinks. The Uchiwa adopt refugees because they understand what it's like to be a refugee. They adopted Naruto from Konoha, they adopted their lost clan members when the sharingan brought them home. They adopt people and colours and all the discarded little pieces, and they turn them into something that's theirs. Something precious. Something kind. Something worth protecting, worth living for, and it started, the Uchiwa started, when Uchiha Mikoto adopted him.

**Author's Note:**

> This came from a conversation on discord with S_Serendipity about how we wanted to hide the Uchiha clan in witness protection and give them nice things. Also massive thanks to PearlBear who pulled a lot of it into an editable doc for me, because by that point it was five in the morning and I don't think I could've managed doing it myself.


End file.
